What Was, Will Be, and Might Have Been
by Prospero Hibiki
Summary: Sometimes someone just needs a helping hand reaching out to them at the right moment. Sometimes the right moment just needs that helping hand. And sometimes, just sometimes that helping hand has to make those right moments happen at all.


Title: What Was, Will Be, and Might Have Been (00/?)

Author: Prospero Hibiki

Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of JK Rowling and whoever else has bought the rights in all the various places in the world. In no way are these aforementioned characters being used for my own personal profit, and this is not meant as an infringement of the copyright owned by any of the above entitys.

Rating: No clue at all so let's just go with T for now and I can always drop it or raise it later.

Timeline: Yes

Spoilers: 1-5 Definitely More Maybe

Classification: Yes

Summary: Sometimes someone just needs a helping hand reaching out to them at the right moment. Sometimes the right moment just needs that helping hand. And sometimes, just sometimes that helping hand has to make those right moments happen at all.

Author's Comments: I'm going to screw this story up. It's a given. Personally I think that this is the second most ambitious story I've ever attempted to write. (Only being surpassed by my well and truly abandoned TUSC project from 2000.) I love the idea for this story and I can even point out the time I came up with it and I knew THEN that I was going to screw it up. But I'm going to write it anyway in the hopes that I'm wrong. So there. :-p

**What Was**

In the midst of the radiating stone a young woman opens a thick book and sets it lovingly on a wooden writing table. Caressing the crisp pages revealed she closes her eyes and just feels for the magic that is contained within. It feels wonderful and for a moment she loses herself in the weft and weave of the layers of magic that she can trace with imaginary fingers just as her very real fingers are touching the material that the pages are made from.

Shaking herself violently she pulls her hand back. Too many times before has she lost herself for hours in similar activities and this time she can't. She has too many things to do and too many ideas to express.

Quickly she roots through her things to find the bottle of ink that she has specially charmed for this very purpose and saying the words she'd determined ahead of time pours the entire bottle onto the pages that were previously blank. For a brief moment she fears that all her work has been for naught as the ink collects on the page in a large puddle with splatters appearing on the edges where some of the ink has splashed. Her breath catches in relief as she sees the puddle get sucked into the page from the middle outwards. Soon the page is completely blank once more. Flipping through the pages she is reassured that all the following pages are similarly empty.

It was her biggest fear about this project that it would fail here at the last stage. Well, her second biggest fear. Her largest fear was and always had been that she would never finish it. That all the work she'd done throughout the years of schooling and beyond that throughout her entire life would have been for nothing but a fever dream for a sickly child. But it wasn't. The proof of that dream from long ago was sitting before her. Whatever else happened was something else completely different. Whatever else happened would change the world.

Picking up the golden quill she opened a bottle of rather ordinary ink and flipped to the inside cover at the back of the book. It took only a few minutes to write the rather unique potion formula for the creation of the ink so that it wouldn't be lost forever. Nodding at the work she double checked the instructions for accuracy before casting the laminating spell she'd developed for just this very reason. Closing the book once more she placed the book flat on the table and placed the quill onto the warm brown cover. This part of her work had been tested before but she wished to confirm that the finalization of the project had not changed things. Sure enough the quill quickly sank into the leather of the cover and formed itself into a cover design in its own image. Running her finger down the quill it quickly popped back into its former position.

Picking up the quill before it could once more sink into the cover she reopened the book and dipped it once more into the ink on the desk and opened it to the front inside cover. Not having any previous ideas about what to write for these monumental first words, the instructions on the back cover not really counting, she just closed her eyes and wrote whatever would come from her heart.

_I write these words for the spirit of hope that not all children in this world will have to suffer the pains that I have seen others suffer during my life. I write these words for the spirit of life that not all children in this world will have to see their parents taken from them fighting against an evil that has consumed this country for far too long. I write these words for the spirit of justice that soon the good people of my country shall not have to fear leaving their homes and be afraid that the men with evil in their black hearts will take from them their lives. Most of all I write these words for the spirit of love that in some distant place someone is reading these words and knows that they are loved. For you are loved. You do not know me and can not know me for I am gone. Know though that I do love you for if you are reading these words then something wonderful has happened and these words exist still to give you hope, life, justice, and love. For that I shall be ever thankful. Please read these words and have hope that though life ends and justice seems to falter, love endures._

_-LE_

Nodding in satisfaction she once more picked up her wand and laminated the page. Packing up the other things from the desk she quietly made her way out of the room and down the steps into the common room. It was past the beginning of dinner and her friends would be beginning to wonder where she was. Besides, she was getting hungry anyway.


End file.
